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Having heard great things about Origin from various sources, I jumped at the chance to purchase the DVD cheaply on Amazon. When it arrived, I was excited, the blurb on the case leading me to remember the hype when it was first released; 'dreamily beautiful,' 'breath-taking,' 'almost painfully beautiful,' one couldn't blame me for expecting a lot from the film, and I couldn't help but expect a lot, with Neo's feature on the film in mind which compared the film to Ghost in the Shell: Innocence! Now, I'm not an enviromentalist by any means, so I do admit I was skeptical when I ... read a lot about the film being heavily involved in such themes, but what the Hell, I thought, a great film will always be great even if I don't agree with its agenda; the Battleship Potemkin was voted the greatest film of all time and it was a propaganda piece for the USSR!
The problem with Origin, however, is that it is NOT a good film. Ignoring my own frustration at the plot's subservience to nature over man (I'll leave this out of the review, but honestly, place a human figure in place of 'the forest' and you have a tyrannical regime that limits resources to retain obedience), the story is disjointed and poorly paced. Rather than the characters developing at all, they are mere mannequins forced into various situations, insanely scaled to advance the plot with no little hint of deus ex machina. Relationships blossom without so much as a word or meaningful conversation between characters, and the viewer is left wondering why, and did they miss something? In trying to pretend its artistic and intellectual value, Origin has missed out on coherence, instead feeling like a rushed project cobbled together from a collapsed series (indeed the story might be better served within such a setting).
This might all be partly forgiven had the film measured up on another count, but the visuals in Origin were nowhwere near as spectactular as I had been lead to believe. The CGI, which in films such as Innoncence fitted perfectly with the subject matter, clashed horribly with the organic design, and the characters were poorly designed, with expressions and shadow seemingly omitted. Most offensively, smoke stacks (of which there were undue amounts in the film) were represented as completely static for the most part, even in lingering shots. This I might expect from a series, but in a feature?
The only element which Origin managed to pin down was the music, which worked well in the admittedly brilliant opening sequence (one feels the critics watched this part of the film and nothing else when writing their reviews). Overall, however, I'm just glad I bought the film cheaply, because if this is the best modern anime has to offer, I'm not convinced. A coherent plot, less static art and adult character design are demanded, especially if a film is expected to live up to comparisons with Miyazaki and Oshii.